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YouTube's homepage has a lot of influence over what you watch, but the company's new tool may help improve its recommendations.
As spotted by Android Authority, some users are getting a new feature called "Your Custom Feed," which allows you to enter an AI prompt to refine YouTube's suggestions. For example, you can tell it you like "watching video podcasts about history," and in the future it will prioritize videos on that topic, even if you haven't watched many of them in the past.
YouTube has yet to fully explain the feature, but it appears that prompts will be weighted against other elements in its own algorithm, such as what you regularly search for or what you've been watching recently. Letting you introduce your own tweaks allows you to quickly explore new topics and video styles.
YouTube refers to this as an "experiment," which means most users aren't able to access it. We were unable to turn it on across multiple YouTube accounts.
If you are included in the test, you’ll find a new chip on the homepage at the top that says Your Custom Feed. Press it and it'll ask you to enter prompts into its AI tool.
Despite its name, this feature is different to the site's Customize your feed option, which first launched in 2024. That’s a box on your homepage that gives you multiple recommendations and asks you to upvote or downvote each option.
This new custom feed feature instead allows you to make a handbrake turn in what you watch, without losing YouTube's own powerful recommendations, which may help introduce you to interesting new channels and voices.